


Violent Delights and Violent Ends

by hhanyu



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M, Heartbreak, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-08
Updated: 2014-04-08
Packaged: 2018-01-18 15:51:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 9,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1434166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hhanyu/pseuds/hhanyu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of drabbles about o/c's relationship with Yuzuru.</p><p>"Maybe we were meant to lose the ones that we love. But I’ll fight for you till then."</p><p>(note- I am hhanyu on tumblr. I will post my completed works on AO3. For stories in progress and other drabbles, come to hhanyu.tumblr.com/writing)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Meeting

You take a deep breath and push open the door to his room. It’s been twelve months, but the pain still stabs you like a sword, just being in this place again. There’s dust on his bookshelves, covered in skating medals and trophies. There’s a notebook on his desk, and seeing his familiar scrawl is like an iron fist squeezing your chest. You open the first drawer, and there’s a small photo album. “Where to find happiness”, the first page reads. You flip the page. The first thing in there is a picture of you and him.

Suddenly, it’s all too much, all the memories and hopes and dreams, you have to get out, get out of this room where you suddenly forget how to breathe, where he seems to be so real. Suddenly, you find yourself in the hallway outside, crouching against the wall, gasping and waiting for the pain to subside. It does, but to a dull ache, and you press your head against your knees and rock back and forth, willing everything to go away.

Instead, you find yourself reliving a memory.

Your parents always called you curious, maybe a little too much for your own good. Not that it mattered, they used to say, but don’t do anything dangerous.

There was some sort of festival downtown that day, you forget. You were what- 15? 16? You can’t remember, mainly because you’ve been trying so hard to forget everything, because it only makes the pain worse.

Anyways, this was Toronto, and the Christmas Parade practically brought out the whole city, with children waiting for candy from the floats, and music blasting out of every corner of the street. Every block was blocked off, and any person with a brain knew better than to attempt to drive, or walk between blocks, for that matter.

It only took your mind one second to react when the boy with the suitcase tried to step out on the curb right before the floats were to pass by. You reached out and grabbed his arm, tugging him back with a “hey, are you out of your mind?” and sighing when you noticed he had ear buds in. Of course. Another one of the young and careless.

The way he spun around, you thought he was going to give you a sharp retort for touching him, or frown and walk away. Instead, he turned and gave a small bow to you.

How queer.

Thrown off by the gesture, you laughed nervously and nod towards the line of floats now parading through the street. “You’d be flatter than a pancake now,” you remarked.

The look he gave you was one of confusion. “Cars don’t make food,” he said, pointing towards the white and green float with Santa Claus on the side.

You snort in that dismissive teenage way, you recall. And you said something snarky, but it’s not quite clear in your memory now, but it’s something like, “well, you’re not from here, are you?”

The way his eyes crinkled when he smiled made your heart beat in a weird way, you remember, something that made an impression on you. “No,” he answered. He pointed at his chest. “Japan,” he said, looking expectantly at you.

“Ah. Right,” you answered. Suddenly feeling awkward, you noticed that the floats had all passed by and gave him a good-natured shove towards the street. “I’ll see you around.”

He turned and grabbed your hand, in what you thought was a weak handshake attempt, but just ended up holding it for a little longer than what you were comfortable with. But his fingers had felt strange, so strange against your hand, and you’d then-

A sharp noise jolts you back to the present. It’s your phone. A call from a friend, reminding you that there’s plans for dinner tonight, and you have to join the silly entourage of couples as they go fool around in some fancy restaurant. You, alone.

You realize that you’d rather forget, forget it all. Memories only make it hurt worse.


	2. First Kiss

The nightmares repeat themselves, over and over, until one day you think to yourself that getting amnesia would probably hurt less than having to live through that same scene over and over. Everyone says, think positive, forget about it, let it go, but their words came out so much easier than your actions.

So that night, when you wake up screaming again, you finally decide to try what the woman in the suit told you, to recall positive memories.

After that encounter at the rink, you’d seen the boy around town a couple more times, at the bakery, taking your brother to get his hockey gear, the store, just around. There were waves, smiles, short greetings. His name is Yuzuru. Last name Hanyu. He’s a figure skater. Popular in his home country, it seems. But practically nameless here. He comes here to train, months at a time. You helped him order at the bakery, because he can’t quite seem to pronounce the names of the breads and pastries, and had eaten a quick lunch with him after. Nothing more. Just two people colliding in this world, like millions of others.

But you can’t help but think of the last time, the little bow he’d given, the way he held your hand in an awkward attempt at a handshake, and the way his smile seemed to be contagious to everyone around him.

You were 17, going on 18 that summer. College had been decided.  _America_. The word seemed as foreign as your own heritage, you, an Asian girl born in Canada, now bound for the capital of the US. Columbia hadn’t been your top choice, but your whole family still made a huge deal about it, coming out to celebrate at a restaurant and practically making it seem like you’d just been selected for coronation as Queen of the world. The attention was stifling, this aunt calling every other day to ask how her son could get in, that extended relative sending chocolates, that cousin messaging you, this invitation, that party. Even though you were leaving in a week, your whole family still seemed shell shocked at the fact you’d gotten in.

So you tried to stay away from home. And that day, you’d found the excuse to take your brother to his hockey game, and stayed and watched as little elementary school boy crashed and fought for the puck, cheering and clapping with the middle aged hockey moms.

But by the end of the game, your little brother was hobbling off the ice with a sprained ankle and sniffling as you untied his skate.

“Coach says I can’t play my next match,” he said, wincing as you pulled his left skate off.

You patted him on the back. “You’ll be fine. Got everything?” You pulled open his bag, counting his equipment off in your head, skates, laces, guards, padding, jersey, helmet-  _oh_.

“Where’s your helmet?”

He made a guilty face and shrugged his shoulders, which made you sigh. He had a knack for losing just about everything. Homework, lunch bag, water bottles, books, he even lost his skates once, for god sake.

You give him a pointed look but decided not you chide him, with his ankle and all. “Come on,” you say. “I’ll carry you to the car.” The two of you look ridiculous, the sister carrying her brother, who’s carrying his hockey bag, but before you leave you dump him in a chair and stand by the figure skating rink to watch the skaters. It’s become a habit, doing this every time he has a game, because the grace in their movements is mesmerizing.

Your brother’s whining for attention now, so you hand him your phone and let him play, because it’s the only way to appease him. You lean on the stand that encloses the rink, and watch the twists, turns, and jumps. It’s like watching fire, you think, the way the skaters’ bodies move and turn, seemingly so free and effortless.

There’s no warning, one moment you’re watching a girl do her spins and another moment his face is the only thing in your view, and it’s so surprising that you make a yipping noise and jump back as he grins.

“You come to watch me?” he asks, laughing as your face turns a beet red.

“No,” you stammer. “No, no, my brother had a game and I always come to watch the skaters and I didn’t know you skated here but I didn’t come to watch you I promise-”

You stop, because he’s giggling like a little schoolboy at your embarrassment, doubling over against the boards. “You know, if you wanted me to skate, you can just ask me,” he said, turning serious. “Anything for my first friend in this new place.”

The only thing you notice is that his English is significantly better. “I-uh,” you start, not sure how to respond. “I was just leaving.” You turn to your brother to pick him up again, but the boy on the ice interrupts you.

“You can’t just leave! Come on, I don’t know anyone here. It’s nice to see a familiar face in a while.”

“I, uh, I gotta go pack,” you answer, with your back to him.

“For what?!”

With a significant amount of effort, you turn back to face him. “I’m leaving in a few days. College, you know.”

The effect on his face is instantaneous. The smile vanishes. He looks shocked and a little bit disappointed, and he sputters out something that sounds like a Japanese exclamation that you can’t quite make out.

“Sorry,” you mutter.

“It’s ok,” he says, quickly recovering with a smile. It doesn’t seem to reach his eyes though, which still look at you with a sad gaze. “My only friend here is leaving. I am a little sad,” he adds.

You scuff your shoes against the floor, filling the silence with the scratching noise. Looking back up at him, you cough out a quiet “I should go”.

But there’s nothing stopping you when he extends his hand, just like last time, except when you take it he doesn’t shake your hand, but pulls you close towards him. The boards around the rink are in the way, but his other hand is pressed against your back, and when the two of you awkwardly bump lips you can feel him smile. It lasts for a lot longer than it should, but you don’t really care, because this isn’t goodbye, goodbyes feel too final and this doesn’t.

So as you lay in bed and stare at the ceiling, you slowly test the muscles on your face, the ones that seem to have forgotten how to smile. And you smile, remembering the clumsiness, the goodbye that turned into something more. The rest of the night, the nightmares go away.


	3. First Date

You’re feeling the hole inside close up. Not that the wounds were ever going to heal, but the panic attacks and nightmares were becoming less frequent. Last night, you caught yourself humming as you heated up leftovers in the kitchen. The positive memories are working, so you try to think of another one, hoping that it’ll keep the dreams away tonight. Forgetting was too hard, but remembering was even harder- but at least bits of pieces of the memories you tried to suppress are coming back. You had to try.

The first semester of freshman year in college hadn’t been bad for you.

Actually, who were you kidding? This was Columbia. The first semester had been going through the nine circles of hell and back. And even that might have been an understatement.

And so when the whole class slammed their pencils down on the last final of the semester, the only thing you wanted to do was sleep forever. Because your parents were out of town with your brother for break, you were depressingly stuck on campus, and the only thing that cheered you up was the thought that you were kind of like Harry stuck at Hogwarts on Christmas.

The first thing you did after getting back to your apartment was order a batch of cookies and wolf them down- white chocolate macadamia, your favorite. Of course it was unhealthy, but cookies weren’t made to be healthy and you weren’t in the mood for counting calories anyways. “Hooray me,” you mutter, not sure if you’re genuinely congratulating yourself or being sarcastic. “I survived first semester.”

When you curl up in bed that night, you do what you always do, hold the little plush Pooh bear he sent you against your chest and make a wish that you get to see him soon. It was thing only thing you’d let him give to you- a birthday present, but you knew that he’d wanted to do more but you wouldn’t let him.

It’s late afternoon the next day when you wake up, and the first thing you think about after rubbing the sleep from your eyes is food. The second thing you think is that something woke you up. A noise? There it was again- knocking on your door. Did you order food and forget? Highly unlikely, but there was no other explanation.

So when you open the door, still in a sweatshirt and yoga pants, your eyes bleary from sleep, the last person you expect to see standing on your doormat is him. So much so that you let out a shriek and slam the door right in his face, breathing heavily.

“Hey, let me in!” You can hear his muffled voice through the door.

Deciding that your eyes are not fooling you, you open the door a crack and peer through at him. “How on earth did you get here?!”

“Passing through for competition. You gave me your address,” he answers, matter of factly like he’s been planning this for months. Knowing him, he probably has. “Can I come in now?”

“I’m a mess,” you mutter, but pull open the door all the way so he can come in. The first thing he does after setting down his bag is to pick you up in a tight hug and kiss you, and you think of how long it’s been- 5 months now- since you last saw him, at the rink where he first kissed you.

After he sets you down, you flop down onto the sofa in a mess of tangled limbs, and he sits down beside you to hold your hand. “So, what do you want to do?”

“Stay here forever and hold your hand,” he answers, matter-of-factly.

You laugh. He’s so sweet, sounding almost like an elementary school student in love for the first time. “Do you want me to show you around?”

He pouts. “Too much walking.” He feigns a groan as he stretches out his legs. “Your Yuzu’s been working hard, see?”

You wiggle and shift your body so that your head is in his lap. “It’s funny,” you say, looking up at his face, the cheeks and his smiling eyes. “This is only the second time you’ve kissed me. All those nights I stayed up to text you and failed my test the next morning really made it seem like a long ti-”

He leans down and kisses you before you can finish the sentence. “And now it’s the third.”

That night, the two of you are snuggled on the couch as the television flickers before you. Yuzu’s never seen The Devil Inside before, which you’d usually dismiss as a trashy film, but the boy kept begging for horror and it was the only one you had.

“If you think this is an excuse for me to cuddle you more, you’re wrong,” you mutter into his chest as he pulls you towards him. “It’s not even scary.”

He laughs. “Right, right.”

But by the middle of the movie you’re the one cackling, because at the old lady’s first scream he’d made a squeaking noise, and by the time the possessed people were crawling all over the walls, he was gripping your hand like a vice and covering his eyes at the same time.

“Yuzu, it’s just a movie, you’re going to be ok,” you say, giggling as he peers at you from between his fingers.

“You didn’t tell me it was going to be scary!”

“You asked for a horror movie!”

“But no this kind,” he whines, and buries his face into your shoulder. “Too many surprises.”

“Jump scares,” you correct him, and wrap your arms around his waist. “Come on, cry-baby, it’s over soon.”

As soon as the movie’s over, he makes little whimpering noises like he’s begging for attention, so you let him kiss you, the two of you on the couch, and this warm feeling spreads from his lips through your whole body.

“Does that make up for the fact you were scared witless by the movie?” you whisper, as he draws away to a take breath.

“Not quite,” he says, wrapping his arms around you and kissing you again.

And you let him kiss you into oblivion.


	4. I love you, and the snow

Love was strange. Even stranger when you had to say it out loud. It doesn’t hurt as bad now. There’s a warmth that you haven’t felt in a long time now. Talking isn’t so bad. The smiles come easier.  _It’s like winter thawing away_ , you think, after flipping through another old photo album.

There’s a picture that stands out, you with snow in your hair, mouth open in an expression of surprise.  _He took this picture_ , you think.

And just like before, it all comes back.

It wasn’t until the third time, date, meeting, whatever, after you started dating that the “I love you” came out from your mouths. You were back in Canada for a visit, and the overwhelming amount of attention from your family was starting to smother you again.

So when he suggested that he fly over to visit, you almost turn him down on the phone.

“Yuzu, you need to train. Olympics are like, close, close-ish, at least.”

“It’s only a year and a half,” he whines. “I have time. Come on. Please?”

In the end, you’re forced to give in, because he threatens to fly over and sleep on your porch if you don’t let him in.

You wait until the last moment possible to tell your parents (yes, the day before he was flying over), and it causes about as much of an uproar as your college announcement did, because your mom practically goes into a frenzy, phoning this relative and that, and your dad practically makes your tell Yuzu’s whole life story to him. Your mom goes into an intense cooking mode that you can only snap her out of by reminding her that it’s just the four of you, you, Yuzuru, and her and dad.

The next night, when the doorbell finally rings, your mom makes a motion for you to go and get it. There’s a sudden hint of panic in your stomach- a thought that maybe Yuzu wouldn’t like your mom, the intensely focused one that always pushed you to work harder, or your dad, the overprotective one that encouraged you to not even look at boys while you were still in high school. Or that your parents wouldn’t like him- the 18 year old who still looked like a boy, and even though his English was vastly improved, still slipped back into his habit of speaking in choppy sentences when he gets careless.

But all of that vanishes when you open the door, and he’s standing right there in some kind of collared shirt and black pants, his coat hung over his arms. Just seeing him was enough, you think as you stand there, with a stupid smile frozen on your face. He laughs and pulls you into his arms, swinging you around in a circle. He smells like the wintery wind outside, and you don’t let go when he sets you down on the ground, because you don’t know when you’ll get the chance to do this again.

“God, I missed you so much,” you tell him, your voice muffled by his jacket.

“I missed you,” he says back. “And I love you,” he adds, whispering so softly you can barely hear it.

You want to answer him, but suddenly your mom is calling from the kitchen (“Well, what are you waiting for? Bring the boy in so I can have a look!”) and you’re forced to let go of him, rolling your eyes. “They’re a bit weird,” you apologize, taking his hand and leading him in.

He gently sets his finger on your lips. “Sh, nothing to apologize for. I’m more nervous for this than you are.”

Thankfully, the next couple of hours pass without a hint of problems (with the exception of your mom seeing him for the first time and exclaiming “handsome boy!” and “wow, so tall!”, which Yuzu had turned a beet red after hearing). By the time he excuses himself to leave, you’re exhausted, but you get up from the sofa to walk him to the door.

He opens the door, and the wind hits both of you with an icy blast. “Crap,” you mutter, watching the thick flakes of snow fall from the now darkened sky. You turn to him. “Are you sure you want to go back to the hotel? There’s only to be no taxis in this weather.”

He shrugs, kicking at the accumulating snow on your porch. “I don’t mind.”

You laugh, seeing the look on his face, and drag him back into the house. “You wanted to stay here all along,” you say, shutting the door and pulling him towards you for a kiss.

You feel his smile beneath your lips as he answers. “You know me too well.”

The next morning, you’re temporarily confused as to why you feel so deliciously happy, then you realize that his soft breathing is warming your ear and one of his arms is resting on your waist. Despite your mom’s warning (“No funny business if he stays in your room!”) and the sleeping bag they’d brought out for him so you two wouldn’t be in the same bed, there’s nothing that stops you from joining him after they’d both gone to sleep. You wiggle around to face him, watching the way his mouth puckers when he sleeps, like a little child, and how his whole face is so peaceful, and before you can stop yourself, you plant a small kiss on his lips and whisper “I love you”, thinking back to how you didn’t answer him last night.

The smile on his lips tells you that he heard what you said, and you give somewhere between an exasperated sigh and a noise of discontent when he opens his eyes.

“Were you awake the whole time?”

“Woke up before you,” he answers, laughing. “Felt you staring at me the whole time.”

It’s your turn to pout now, and he laughs, pulling you closer to him. “Come on, you know you can’t stop staring at me,” he teases.

You wriggle out of his embrace and up into a sitting position. “I think I’d rather stare at a heap of manure than your face,” you huff.

“Aw, come on, now I’m offended,” he whines, shifting his body so he’s sitting beside you. He tries to hug you again, but you dodge his arms and stand up.

“Come on, I’ll make you breakfast,” you tell him, walking towards your curtains to pull them open. He follows you, and you hear him gasp when you open the window to reveal a hushed scene of blindingly white snow covering every part of your street as far as you can see.

He makes a small exclamation in Japanese, and wraps his arms around your waist, resting his chin on your shoulder. “I’ve never seen so much snow before!”

“But you must have snow in Japan,” you question.

“Never this much,” he answers, looking like a little boy on his birthday. “It’s so beautiful.” He pauses for a second, a small smile playing on his lips. “Just like you.”

Yuzu’s not much of a guy for compliments, so when you get them they make you warm from your cheeks down to your toes. You’re about to suggest eating breakfast, but then you have a change of mind.

Ignoring the protesting growl coming from your stomach, you tell him, “Yuzu, grab your coat.”

“What, why?”

You’re pulling a pair of sweatpants over your pajamas. “What better way to spend the morning in the snow?”

So two hours later, when your cheeks are numb from cold and you find yourself rolling in the snow laughing, with him somehow on top of you, trying to steal kisses, you think to yourself:

_This was so worth skipping breakfast for._


	5. Take Care of You

You think that the next time you sneeze, your whole brain is going to shoot straight out of your nose. Your whole head hurts, everything aches, and you think to yourself about how if the flu was a person, you’d probably have bashed in its skull with a brick by now.

But the only thing you can do is sniffle and smile weakly as he presses another tissue into your hand.

“Honestly, Yuzu, you should be training,” you laugh weakly, pausing to sneeze again. This elicits a pout from him. “And even if you don’t train, I might get you sick.”

He shrugs. “I won’t mind. Then we can stay in bed together,” he adds, wiggling his eyebrows and making you laugh, then wheeze as another fit of coughing overtakes you.

He brushes strands of sweaty hair from your forehead, and tucks the covers more firmly beneath your chin. You would usually like this, his soft touch, fingers trailing your face, but everything on you hurts, and touching anything made it worse. So the only thing you do is wince. He quickly apologizes, and goes back to holding your hand.

There’s a half cup of tea left over from last night beside your bed, and he picks it up to take to the kitchen. “I’ll be right back.” He rises and feels your forehead, frowning and shaking his head when he discovers that you’re as feverish as ever.

When he leaves, you allow your mind to wander in the haze of cold and flu medicine. So this is what it’s like to be drugged up. A couple days ago you’d been fine. Perfectly healthy, visiting him in Japan, and boom, now you were practically a zombie. Without the desire for brains.

You keep telling yourself that you’re so lucky to have him, someone who cares so much about you. Of course, your parents had been calling, checking if you were doing well. You made him pick up the phone so they wouldn’t know you were sick, because your parents, especially your mom, worried so excessively they might have flown over and brought you back to Canada themselves.

The door creaks when he opens it again, and he plops down on the chair beside your bed, taking your hand. He takes one look at you and starts pouting again. You’re not sure whether he’s doing it on purpose or it’s a subconscious thing by now.

“I know, I look like death,” you whisper. Your own voice had started hurting your ears at some point. “But sticking your lip out like that won’t help anything.”

“Sorry,” he mutters, stroking your fingers absentmindedly. “I hate seeing you like this. Sick and hurt, I mean.”

You laugh, then regret it as soon as you start, because your stomach muscles practically twist and turn in protest. You want to curl up, but that would involve moving, and muscles, and more muscle pain- so you just kind of lie there and whimper until the aching in your stomach stops. “The last time I checked, flu doesn’t last forever. I’ll be fine,” you whisper hoarsely.

“I still think we should go see a doctor,” he answers, now holding your hand with both of his.

“Yuzu,” you wheeze, “that’s like asking for a blood transfusion for a paper cut.” He looks confused, then you realize that he doesn’t know what a blood transfusion means, so you explain it to him in basic English.

“But what if it’s a big papercut? Like this big flu?”

You have to try hard not to laugh again. Big flu. The boy was so innocent sometimes. “I promise I’ll be fine.”

He has a flicker of doubt in his eyes, but he shakes it off and the smile returns. “Are you hungry?”

“If you keep feeding me six times a day,” you answer, “you’re going to have to roll me off the bed when I get better.”

“No, it’s because my cooking is so good and you’re only dating me for my cooking.” There’s a hint of laughter in his eyes again.

“If you keep telling yourself that, I’ll stop eating your food.”

He goes to the kitchen anyways, and you hear the tinkling of pots and pans and the running water as he prepares god-knows-what. To be honest, you are hungry, but the fever and nausea are enough to make to throw up most of what he feeds you. You feel guilty every time it happens, all the food down the drain, but he doesn’t seem to mind, because he cooks again and again.

When he comes in to check on you, you’re already half asleep. Hazily, you hear him promising to wake you up when the food’s ready. He plants a kiss on your head, and the last thing you hear him say before to drift off into a Tylenol sleep is a quiet “I love you”.


	6. Birthday

You hear his laugh before he charges around the corner like a little boy and wraps his arms around your waist. Apparently, a birthday is “deserving of a million hugs and kisses”, as he said over and over again through this whole week. The sly smiles and winks were enough to drive you mad, because you know he’s planning something big, but he doesn’t leave a single hint for you to grasp.

He’s in a crisp dress shirt, but you see the little casual things about him that you love, like how he always forgets to iron his black pants, and how the tiny wrinkles in them match the little crinkles in his eyes every time he smiles. There’s soft music in the background, and you think that this is no different than the most romantic date of your life, because he takes your hands and leads you around the room in what seems to be a dance, but is more like you two ogling each other’s faces.

Inevitably, he does lean in for the kiss, and you can tell that your cake is vanilla (evidently, he tastes the food when he cooks anything).

You two are holding each other tight now, and you mumble into his shoulder. “Are we going anywhere?”

“Home is the best end place to any journey,” he answers. Another little thing about him that you notice. Half his responses could come straight out of a proverb book.

You stay like this with him for another song, then another, turning slowly around the room, and you think to yourself that maybe if you’d met him earlier, you two would be doing this on ice instead of in your room. That is, if you could even get on ice without falling the first step.

When he finally waltzes over to the table, jumping like a little boy, you see your cake for the first time. It’s simple by store standards, but you can tell it’s just so him, the elegance, the waves of icing that you feel like look like his turns. You feel like this cake took him hours, and when you look back on his face, he seems older somehow, not like the boy you usually see that jumps around like a grasshopper and can’t seem to sit still.

You can’t find the words to thank him, but he shakes his head and smiles, motioning for you to blow out the candles. You do, and the only thing you can think to wish for is a future with him, in which you can see a million more of his smiles that look like rays of sunlight.

So when he creeps up behind you and pushes your face into the concoction of icing, cake, and strawberries, the only noise you can make is an indignant yelp, hearing him cackling like a naughty kid. Sighing on the inside, you think,  _the times this boy seems like he’s a million years old are actually the times that he’s still stuck in elementary school._


	7. Rainy Summer Nights

Another visit to the woman with the suit. She seems so detached from your story that it’s like listening to a pre-recorded voice trying to console you. But there’s one thing in her mind that sticks out to you the most.

The bad memories are just as important as the good ones.

And gritting your teeth, you conjure one up.

It’s not until a couple of months into your relationship that you realize you’re hitting a rough spot.

Your conversations start breaking down.

There’s no excitement anymore.

No more “I love you”s.

And when the fighting hits, it hits hard.

There’s rain pattering on the room again. It’s the end of summer, and you’re back in Toronto, except this time it’s at his apartment, not your house. His schedule’s getting busier and busier, with Sochi in a few months, but that means less and less time with you.

Normally, you’d be heartbroken, but with what’s been happening more and more recently, you feel guiltily glad that’s he’s gone for most of the day. It seems now that both of you have lost the will to fight for the relationship. The only fighting you do is mostly you snapping at him and receiving a blank, dead gaze in return. He mustn’t have known how much those hurt, because you’d rather receive angry words than that stare. But you’re also frustrated with yourself, for not having the will or energy to push yourself to talk to him more, to communicate.

You’re sitting in the living room couch together, scooted far away from the other person as possible, him on his laptop, doing what looks like schoolwork, you absentmindedly turning the pages of Romeo and Juliet. It seemed so ridiculous, you reading a love novel while your relationship was slowly burning down, but you couldn’t help it.

You can feel his stare every once in a while, and out of the corner of your eye you see his mouth puckered in a small “o” like he wants to say something but thinks better of it.

Suddenly, he slams his computer shut, a rare expression of frustration. “You’re…what’s the word…selfish. You’re selfish,” he says in a flat tone, looking in a straight line ahead of him. “You don’t want to talk. You don’t want to spend time with me. Why do you still stay?”

His words hit you so hard that you can’t seem to breathe, much less process a reply. There’s tears welling up behind your eyes, not ones of anger but ones of frustration, at yourself, at your immaculate ability to screw everything up and lack the conviction to fix it, at falling in love with him and now hurting the both of you.

So you bite your lip and stalk over to your bedroom with the last scraps of dignity you have left, shutting the door with shaking hands. When you sit down on the bed, the tears come out, all the ones of shame, because you know he’s right, you’re the selfish one. He’s been trying so hard all along, for you, for your happiness, to keep you by him, and what you gave him in return was nothing. Not a single effort.

You want to go out and apologize, but you know that you can’t put what you’re feeling in words.

The sound of coughing from the room over wakes you up. You don’t remember falling asleep, but evidently the rain on the room did its job. You know it’s him, the asthma acting up, and you usually sleep through these attacks. He doesn’t want you to know anyways; he hates it when you come in when he’s out of breathe, because he has so much pride and he doesn’t want you to see him in those times, when he’s sweating and gasping.

At first, you close your eyes and try to block the sound out, but after it doesn’t stop, you grit your teeth and roll off the bed. You hesitate before you open his door, but the word “selfish” doesn’t stop ringing in your head, so you push open the door and quietly walk in. He’s kneeled over beside his bed, gripping his mattress, his whole body shaking with the effort of wheezing, his medicine on the floor beside him.

You kneel beside him, taking one of his hands that are clammy with sweat. “Hey. Hey. Deep breaths.”

His breathing slows eventually, and he lifts his head to look at you. His face is lined with tear tracks, whether from the coughing or something else, you can’t tell. “Sorry,” he croaks, squeezing your hand.

“For what?”

He looks at you. “What I said before you went to sleep.”

You shake your head. Again, you think of all the feelings, all the thoughts you want to tell him about, but you can’t quite bring yourself to, because the energy is gone. “It’s not your fault.”

He pulls you closer, and the two of your sit there, you head on his chest, the sound of his rattling breathing in your ears until the pale morning light streaks through the windows, and through your haze of half-sleep, you feel him pick you up and place you gently on his bed.

“I have to go to the rink,” he whispers, planting a kiss on your lips. “Sleep tight.”

You murmur something incoherent, something along the lines of wanting him to stay, but he only lightly brushes your fingers with his and walks away.

You snap out of the memory, shaking your head. There’s pinpricks of tears in your eyes. If only you knew that making up after a fight didn’t last forever. If only you knew how that rattling breath would haunt you, even years after.

_If only._


	8. Not Your Romeo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, this is in a third person instead of second person point of view, mainly because it's more emotional when you view the events almost like a bystander. But the girl is still o/c.

As soon as they get home, the fights begin again. It’s over little things- the way he leaves his skates so that she trips on them while she comes into the door, or when she forgets to close the bedroom door while she’s cooking and their sheets smell like spicy fish for the next few days.  And it always ends with the ferocious kissing, triggered more by anger and loneliness than by love. Then it would start again the next night.

Sochi had been fine- he’d been away most of the time, training, so when they finally got to see each other the desire just to touch and hold the other person had overwhelmed any sense of nitpicking fights.

These days after Sochi, the fighting had started up again. The slammed doors, the hours of training without telling her where he’d gone, the refusal to meet the other person’s eyes.

So that night, when he came home from practice two hours late, his dinner already cold and congealed at the table, she decided it was time to confront him.

She opens her mouth, trying to think of the words to express her frustration, her anger at their inability to act like adults. She knows it’s a two way problem, but at this point she just wants to take it all out on someone, and that someone happens to be him.

Before she can say a word, he’s already gotten to it. “It’s cold,” he mutters, looking down at the table and pushing his plate away.

The comment’s enough to set her off, and he knew that she was going to react that way. “Well, come back home earlier next time,” she said, shoving the plate back at him and splattering a few drops of sauce on his training clothes.

And before they know it they’re screaming again, only this time it’s different- the anger’s about each other, not about the little things they’ve done, but about how they treat each other, how they can’t go one night without the fighting, how little time they actually give to each other.

So when he tries to kiss her, like all the other times, she slaps him across the face, immediately feeling guilty after seeing the hurt look on his face. After that it’s all a blur, the screaming and shouting turns into choked back tears, and when they’re done with the fight it feels more tiring than any practice he’s ever skated in his life. This time when he kisses her, she lets him, grabbing his back and pulling him closer.

But they know they have each other back again. It was like falling in love for the first time.

 

A few weeks later, she traveled with him to the World Championships. He was training again, but they were closer than they’d ever been before, not physically, but emotionally, like a real relationship would be. It wasn’t the naïve kind of love that had blanketed their eyes the first time, but a deeper, more mature one. He’d joked that their love was wine, left to age. Not that he’d ever had wine before. His coach had struck that out the first day of practice.

The night after his short program, they were snuggled on the couch; him fresh out of the shower, tired after another showstopping skate that had missed his previous record by a tenth of a point, and her in his arms, head on his shoulder, breathing in the smell of his soap and shampoo.

“You’re watching tomorrow right?”

“Obviously,” she answers, playing with his fingers that are laced with her own. “How could I not watch my Romeo skate?”

His smile is tinged with a hint of disapproval. “I don’t want to be Romeo.”

“Why not?”

“He dies. Juliet dies. Why would I want that?”

“Because their love goes on,” she answers. With a shake of her head, she adds, “but I get where you’re coming from.”

 

So the next night, when she forgets her ticket into the arena, she almost strangles the man at the ticket counter in frustration.

“I’m sorry m’am,” he said, over and over. “Looking up your ticket is going to take quite a while.”

She hisses through clenched teeth. “My boyfriend is skating in five minutes, I’ve already missed most of the long program, and that’s the best you can do? It’s been thirty minutes and you can’t find a damned ticket?”

“I’m sorry m’am, but our procedures dictate-”

“Oh shut up,” she spat, cutting him off. “Just go find my ticket.”

 

They’re calling his name on the ice. There’s coach, coming to clap him on the back and say a few encouraging words. He takes the chance to glance up at the stand, sweeping for her face. She’s supposed to have gotten seats up front. But he doesn’t find her.

She’s there somewhere, he reassures himself, pushing off the ice of the ice and lifting his arms to wave at the roaring crowd.

As the music begins, he lets his body take over. He sees her face, the long hair framing her cheeks, the blinding smile. They’d fallen in love all over again, but there was so much more to it this time. It was the kind of understanding that the first time had lacked. The quadruple salchow.  _Her voice_. He lands it. Toe loop.  _Her laugh_. Another perfect landing. She must be so proud now right. He swore he could hear her voice, cheering with the rest of the spectators.

A spin. Time seems to slow down. He sweeps the stands again, hoping to find her, maybe see her smiling at him, her Yuzuru, skating a perfect short program and now a perfect long program as well. Nothing.

His heart is sinking fast now.  _She’s not there_. He feels it too, down to the tips of his toes. It’s like the ultimate betrayal, like she’s pumped his heart back to life and ripped it out from him. His limbs get heavy, and as the music hits the climax of the main theme, he arches his back and opens his arms in and explosion of pain and sorrow.

A lutz.  _She’s not there_. Footwork. More footwork.  _She’s gone_. As he skates by the judges, he swears he can see one wiping away tears. He’d be proud of this usually- he’s probably racking up points on the presentation section. But not now. The ending of the music was near now. More spins.  _She doesn’t love me._  The final, dramatic thump as his hand hits the ice.  _No more._

The crowd’s roar fades to a dull vibration. He looks up, barely. His limbs are lead, and he can’t seem to catch his breath. But for a split second, he sees her. Cheeks numb with cold, hair tousled like she’d been running.  _She was there._

He smiles. Then his only feeling is a wave of fear as he claws at his throat, trying to breathe.

 

She’d missed it! The damned ticket man. She’d seen his last spin, the dramatic ending as he fell to the ice, re-enacting Romeo’s death. It must have been one hell of a godly program though, because the noise level in the crowd is enough to make the windows shake.

He looks up for the briefest moment, and she knows he sees her, because he has the smallest of smiles on his face. She can feel love, pride, and all her other emotions burning through her, just looking at him on the ice.

So it takes her a little longer to realize that he’s twitching on the ice now, clawing at his throat. Her cheers turn into one drawn out scream. She desparately looks for a way on the ice- she knows what this is, it’s happened in practice before, but never like this.

Before she knows it, she’s running towards the ice, ignoring the grabs of the orange vested guards at her arms.  _Too slow, too slow, the medical team was running too slowly, everything was too slow._

So when she picks him up in her arms, ignoring the packed stands, the people, the only thing she can do is shake him and beg him,  _scream_  at him to breathe, just to breathe, that everything was going to be ok, breathe, breathe,  _breathe_.

And when his eyes roll back, she knows that it’s too late, that the medical staff with the stretcher and their kits are too late, that’d he was already gone.

His words are plain as day now, taunting her cruelly.

_I don’t want to be Romeo._

_Romeo._


	9. Aftershock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Again, if you would like to view my current work (which I will post here after it's done, and all of my other short drabbles), come pay a visit to hhanyu.tumblr.com!

It’s a year and a half later before you muster up the nerve to go and see him. His family has been pleading you to fly over, begging, but there was never enough time. Or at least that’s what you told them. The reality had been that you simply didn’t think you were strong enough, that one look would shatter you again, after so long trying to put the pieces back.

Your hotel is nice, really, you would have enjoyed it had you not been here to do what you were going to do. When you drag your feet up the steps towards his house, your whole body feels like it’s been weighed down with lead, and you stumble in the last step, falling onto your hands. You could walk away right now. You could go back to your hotel, spend the day there, and forget about it all.

But you feel like this is the only way to get things back to normal.

Before you can knock on the door, it’s open, and you find yourself face to face with his mother. She looks older than the last time you saw her, about a year ago when you first visited him here. There’s lines around her eyes now, and a tired look on her face. Even then, she smiles at you.

“Do come in,” she says, holding the door open.

You give her a vigorous shake of your head, because you know if you go in a see any trace of things he’s told you about his childhood, you’ll have a breakdown. Deep breaths. The house is so familiar, the way he’s described it to you before, but the memories get jumbled up again, because it’s like having a sensory overload of him.

“Really, it’s fine, I just came for the…” your voice trails off.

She understands. “One second,” she says, walking back into the house and disappearing into a room. While she’s gone, you close your eyes and try to collect yourself, try to keep it together, because his voice and his presence are so loud here, the laughs, the warmth, the memory. When she returns, she first hands you the slip of paper that you asked for, and something else that you’re not expecting- a small paper wrapped box, about the size of your hand. Then she quickly wraps you in her arms.

“We were cleaning the room…and…” Her voice cracks for a second. “We thought this would be nice to give you.”

She lets go of you. The only thing you can think to say is a hushed “thank you”, and when you take the parcel from her you can feel your hands trembling. It’s a light thing, but in your hands it seems to weigh a million pounds.

When you’re on the taxi again, you’re tempted to open the parcel, but you think better of it and decide to wait until you’re there. The thought is frightening- it’s not that you don’t know what you’ll find, you do, but it’s the fear that you won’t know how you’ll react.

The late summer breeze makes the gate creak when you open it. The grass rustles under your feet as you walk, looking for him, but the only thing you can hear is the pounding in your ears. There’s something wrong with your vision, and you realize your eyes are blurred with tears.

 _No. No_. You couldn’t lose it now, couldn’t fall apart this quick. This whole thing was supposed to give you peace, put everything back together, but it was only hurting worse and worse.

You turn to look at the gate, now far behind you, and there’s a wild, primal urge to run, to run away anywhere, as long as it’s not here.

But you had to stay, because for once you weren’t going to be too tired, too scared to face things, to make things right for yourself.

When you finally see him five minutes later, it feels like someone’s tearing open your heart again, just like it did that day on the ice. When you kneel in front of him, you suddenly forget what you’re here for, and the only thing you can think is all the things you never said, all the words he’s never going to hear.

You kneel until your legs are numb, until the pounding in your head subsides and you can breathe again. You didn’t bring flowers. But he would have liked that- he always got too many flowers from shows and when he brought them home they always made him sneeze.

“Yuzu,” you whisper, your voice straining to hold back tears. You lay one trembling hand on the cold marble, gripping the slab with your fingers. As if you could put warmth and life back. You had a whole speech prepared, all the things you never said, all the apologies that you held back. But in the end, the only thing you manage to choke one thing out before the tears take over.

“I miss you.”

You forget for how long you kneel there, letting the tears drip down your face, clenching the stone. When you finally rise into a sitting position, it takes a while for the feeling to come back to your legs.

He deserves to be here, such a peaceful place, with the trees and the babbling stream, you think. Where no one else knows where he is. Away from the world.

The memories come back, still bitter, but they feel lighter than before, less jumbled. Your arm holding him back from the street when you first met. The kisses. The fights. The make ups. His smile whenever he caught you watching him skate. The scrunched faces he made when he tripped. The way him pants were never ironed. His pouts.

So when you finally get to your feet, you feel the tear tracks on your cheeks, but there’s also a smile on your lips, the first time in a while. There’s still that aching hole in your chest, but the pain is a numb throbbing now, not nearly as bad as the stabbing wound before.

You stop for a second, reaching into your pocket. The package. You were waiting to open it, waiting until you could be beside him again. It was silly, but you thought that it would make you feel better if he could see your reaction.

You rip the paper open, and the first thing that tumbles out is a small photograph. There’s handwriting on the back, his, you can tell, and it reads: “ _Needed her help to aim high_ ”, and beside it a scrawled heart. Curious, you flip the picture over. It’s him skating, in his practice clothes, but you don’t quite understand the caption until you peer more closely at it. In the front of the picture, leaning on the rink, it’s you. You know where this is from, a couple of months after the kiss at the rink, when you were first back from school. Someone had taken this picture, your brother maybe? His coach? You don’t know, but you slip it into your pocket, your mouth tilted up in a smile.

Then the package- it’s a cardboard box, and when you open it a small yellow thing falls out. A bear. It’s similar to the one that still sits by your bed, but it looks older, more faded, and someone’s sewn back one of its arms. Underneath, a note from his mom.

“ _His first toy_ ”.

You zip it up under your jacket, as if by holding it by your heart you can hold him closer. And when you finally get up to leave, there’s a weight that’s been lifted from your body. He’s gone. It was final. There was nothing to hang on to.

_Goodbye, Yuzu._


End file.
